> what it is about Europeans on American websites telling us...
There's this strong sentiment among Americans that I see on social media so often these days that the Internet is somehow an American thing and we need to watch our mouths or get off their lawn.
Sorry dude, but my country’s vast stores of natural resources don’t exactly help me afford my mortgage payment next month.
That list certainly doesn’t reflect the average person’s disposable wealth. I’ve lived in two of the countries that rank “higher” than the US and in no way is the average person more wealthy. Not even close. In fact I’d say the average person in one of those countries has about half the disposable wealth of the average American.
What I meant was my country’s vast wealth in the form of natural resources hardly helps me pay for my day to day expenses. What matters is my income and my personal, disposable wealth. Which your ranking is not measuring.
That’s why you have bizarre numbers like the average Australian having 3x the wealth of Americans.
You basically referenced a link you didn’t read.
And like I said, when you look at the ranking it doesn’t make sense unless they did include things beyond personal wealth. You really think the average Spaniard is wealthier than the average Norweagean?
Sorry for the "downvotes are the disagree button" that you are experiencing for raising good and interesting discussion points, and frankly calling out misleading numbers that were posted. I didn't know that the average German was worse off and poorer than the average person from Greece (I guess finally the wealth transfer from Germany to Greece is being reflected in the numbers! - kidding, kind of).
First it was Australia was 3x wealthier than the US. Now it’s that the US is poorer on a median level, yet I see no data.
What am I reading? No wonder the OP is frustrated. Rightfully so.
Just because the median citizen is “only” in the top 25 countries in the world, doesn’t mean that what the OP said is incorrect.
It’s also difficult to do proper comparisons. Notice anything out of the ordinary in that list? Check out the population of the countries. Of course Australians are wealthy, they live on a continent nearly the size of the US with the population of L.A. county. That’s a lot of resources to go around for a small number of people.
I echo the OP in the constant anti-American sentiment I find on the internet being frustrating. “Your healthcare sucks, your taxes suck, look at how poor you are because of this chart”.
A lot of that doesn’t even reflect reality for many people. Let’s talk about healthcare. My experience in healthcare is I schedule an appointment at the university medical center, get extremely high quality care, and that’s that. I pay $0 for co-pays, or for medicine. Other people with health insurance can do that too. Obviously we have a healthcare problem in the U.S., which is why even to my own personal detriment I support UHC, but the experience people have in the U.S. varies widely. The U.S. government is responsible for like 70% of U.S. healthcare expenditures.
Ask yourself, why does the U.S. make citizens file taxes if they live abroad? I wonder if it has anything to do with people becoming massively wealthy and then conveniently living in another nearby country so they don’t have to pay taxes? Or maybe someone works at a company and that company can just relocate them somewhere cheap so they can avoid taxes? I’m not sure, but I hear a lot of “people in America need to pay taxes” but then they also get mad when the government makes people living in other countries pay income taxes. Why should it matter if you live in Japan as an American? You’re still a citizen. If you don’t want to pay taxes then give up your citizenship. How are we supposed to pay for healthcare for example if we allow lots of people to exempt themselves? And the U.S. exempts the first $108,000 of that income. What’s the big deal? That you have to report it? How can we fight corruption if we don’t even make people report their income?
USA's tax burden is 27.1% of GDP
Not an enormous difference.
US median wage USD49,764, Fed + CA tax is $9,611.02 - 19%
Median wage in Australia is far higher than in America seems more important than the tax rate at the 50th percentile
Speak for yourself! I prefer not to be taxed, so I'd rather have the poor taxed than the rich.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
I don't mean to be rude but please look at that above link and understand how poor you as a citizen of USA are. It's frustrating to come from a country thats ~3X as wealthy as the USA in terms of median wealth (i'm Australian) and see the idea that higher taxes are an issue. The higher taxes are on the very wealthy. Median wealth captures this. The USA fucked up somewhere along the way and taxed the poor (those <1million a year) and this is why you are posting what you are posting. More taxes are ok if they are on the rich.